This page lists past and upcoming seminars, meetups and edit-a-thons in which Prairie Futures is involved.

For as varied and diverse as innovation developments have been in the Midwest – with the region hosting the first computing-centered industrial district prior to the rise of Silicon Valley -- existing literature in the social and historical studies of technology has placed relatively little emphasis on the region. This Research Cluster funded by the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities (IPRH) at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign offers a cross-disciplinary exploration into the Midwest's layered innovation histories that have often been overshadowed by innovation narratives focused on dominant regions and centers of computing (whether academic sites like MIT or Stanford, or regions like Silicon Valley and Massachusetts Route 128). This research collaboration adopts a distinct approach to innovation studies by looking elsewhere other than dominant engineering centers, to shed light on inter-disciplinary digital developments in the Midwest – from precision agriculture and rural big data processing, to educational and public computing, and electro-acoustic design – that necessarily bridged expertise from social sciences, natural sciences, engineering, and humanities; and that have frequently been overlooked, even as they have played roles in reshaping disciplinary imaginaries, global markets, and ecologies. We propose a strategy to develop a means to extend the research and pedagogical resources – both emerging and already existing – that can help support the greater visibility of such local, multidisciplinary histories around collaborative innovation.

• Helpful Historical Resources for Articles

List of published, scholarly resources about topics related to histories of technological innovation in and around Champaign-Urbana.

• Saturday, March 5, 2016 | Art+Feminism Edit-a-thon at Ricker Library